Harmony of forms and symmetry are of the utmost importance in renowned New York-based, Colombian-born abstract painter Fanny Sanín’s sublime, geometric compositions currently on display at Venice Beach’s prestigious L.A. Louver Gallery. As her Los Angeles debut, this comprehensive retrospective traces this acclaimed color field artist’s prolific 50-year career as part of the collaborative Getty-led initiative Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA which aims to highlight Latin American culture across scores of exhibitions presented by 70 of Southern California’s most prestigious museums and galleries.[Read more…]

Known for his eccentric personality, flock of famous artists he calls friends, and wildly experimental geometric paintings, Billy Al Bengston is currently the subject of a much-anticipated retrospective featuring 30 years of his beloved moon paintings at Hollywood’s trendy Various Small Fires Gallery.

Captivated by the seas of stars and luminous moonscapes he witnessed while on a motorcycle trip down the breathtaking Baja Peninsula, Bengston began capturing this incandescent starlight on canvas. He debuted his first moon painting collection at Santa Monica’s James Corcoran Gallery in 1987. The artist has since added to that original series over the years, but never before have they all been displayed together, making this exhibition an incredibly rare opportunity for fans of the artist.[Read more…]

The New Word

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The Line

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko The shower scene in Psycho is easily one of the most iconic scenes in cinema history. Even those who’ve never seen Alfred Hitchcock’s notorious 1960 thriller know its shrieking strings score, and have surely seen it mimicked in a bevy of film and TV shows. Beyond that blood-splashed shower curtain, there’s […]

Part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at The Los Angeles Contemporary Museum of Art Reviewed by Nancy Kay Turner Pacific Standard Time/LA/LA (Los Angeles, Latin America) is the second installment of a widespread series of exhibitions sponsored by The Getty. This incarnation involves over 70 institutions (art galleries, museums, and other cultural venues) from all over […]

By Shana Nys Dambrot Up-Close Magic — sometimes called Micromagic — is a genre of cards and coins, not smoke and mirrors. It’s an arena where the audience is small, perhaps a dozen, or twenty, and they are watching the performer from mere feet or inches away. There’s a lot of eye contact, audience participation […]

The Killing Of A Sacred Deer Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos has raised eyebrows and sunk hearts with his heralded drama Dogtooth and his Colin Farrell-fronted dark comedy The Lobster. Now he reteams with Farrell for The Killing of A Sacred Deer, an enigmatic bit of slow burn horror that boasts a […]

Simphiwe Ndzube’s Bhabharosi at Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles (through October 14, 2017) By Lorraine Heitzman Simphiwe Ndzube, in his bold debut at the Nicodim Gallery, has produced a personal and political tragicomedy that is an insightful commentary on the human condition. Set against the backdrop of South Africa where Ndzube was born, Bhabharosi tells the timely […]

American Women (dismantling the border) II American Women (dismantling the border) II (48″x60″) depicts the U.S. Mexico wall being dismantled by American Indigenous women (Comanche, Navajo, on the U.S. side; Aztec, Miztec, Mayan, on the Mexican side). Most borders which define Nation States — topics of such heated debate — were only recently built, created […]

A Review of Elizabeth Ellen’s Person/a by John Biscello I In the 2004 film, The Libertine, Johnny Depp, playing the Earl of Rochester, delivers an acidic opening monologue, which begins, “Allow me to be frank at the commencement, you will not like me. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You […]

by Alci Rengifo While most of the republic’s cinema-goers flock to local theaters to indulge in the new incarnation of Stephen King’s It, your local RedBox is harboring a deliciously wicked and original work of cinematic viscera, Julia Ducournau’s Raw. This cannibal parable created quite the stir at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival, where audience […]

by Manohla Dargis From “Harry Dean Stanton: Fully Inhabiting Scenes, Not Stealing Them,” in the September 17 edition of the New York Times Soon after the start of “Paris, Texas,” Harry Dean Stanton appears in an astonishing gorge called the Devil’s Graveyard. He’s playing a lost soul, Travis, who will spend the rest of the […]

Reviewed by Kristy Puchko Darren Aronofsky’s Mother! is his Mona Lisa. Maybe a masterpiece, but most definitely crafted to capture the public with its mystery. Following its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival, the art-horror offering has ignited furious debate over its meaning, and even basic plot points. Sure, the trailer suggests this is […]

by Alci Rengifo The music of The Doors seems to find its place in every era since the band’s stirring debut first appeared fifty years ago. Spawned in the era of Vietnam, revolution and technological innovation, The Doors dived into a dark, literary well that is timeless and always relevant. Jim Morrison alone introduced a […]

at David Zwirner, NYC Reviewed by Donald Lindeman Vacation-starved New Yorkers could nonetheless repair to David Zwirner gallery this summer, on West 19th St. and view James Welling’s short film Seascape (2017). The film provides an ingratiating encounter with the storied, rock-festooned Maine coast, accompanied by an audio of accordion and taped ocean sound. There […]

by Patton Oswalt Excerpted from “The Poetic Work of Trailer Recutters,” in the September 4 issue of The New Yorker . . . On YouTube, viewable on my laptop when I should be writing or answering e-mails, there’s another spike for my cinema-addict veins: the work of the Trailer Recutters. These are would-be film editors […]

Kitchen Talk. A Long Smoke. A Story. “It was dark. I mean, a moonless night, barren landscape. And suddenly the train slows, and stops. And somehow the message went out that we could disembark, go off the train, because there was an opportunity to buy some drinks. But there was no station. You come off […]

David Molesky at Deedee Shattuck, Westport MA Reviewed by Robin Scher Somewhere along the lines humanity divorced itself from nature. Fueled by industrialization, ours became a path beholden to the indomitable force of “progress.” That was at least the way things stood until—like an unrelenting alarm clock—we woke up to the consequences wrought by this […]

by Alci Rengifo In Alan Moore’s superb and baroque graphic novel From Hell, Jack the Ripper is quoted as saying, “One day men will look back and say I gave birth to the 20th century.” If such bloody and fevered characters can be set to frame a century, then Heath Ledger’s incarnation of The Joker […]